With the increasing severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, students at the University have had their lives thrown into absolute disarray. With little to no warning, we’ve found ourselves needing to reevaluate and readdress the ways in which we live our lives, from tasks as simple as grocery shopping to something as intricate and convoluted as total academic upheaval.

I performed a wedding on March 13 for two close friends in the living room of the bride’s childhood home. This was the Friday before Princeton University’s spring break and the last day the Center for Jewish Life building was open to the community.

I did not expect or want Bernie Sanders to drop out. I had anticipated voting for him in the general election. Until only a few short weeks ago, it seemed that Sanders would indeed be going head-to-head with our sitting President.

As the coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe and onto the University’s campus, many students were surprised to see unprecedented action taken to halt its spread. While this may be true, the nearly 300-year-old University has weathered multiple pandemics in the last century alone.

Like many venues across the country, McCarter Theatre Center, which lies adjacent to the University, has been forced to cancel all performances, including the Princeton Triangle Club’s annual Reunions performance, through June 30.

Unable to find flights out of Morocco, Michaela Daniel ’21 and Aisha Tahir ’21 spent several days in March thinking they would be stranded abroad, as the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly accelerated. While other study abroad students managed to return home with an overpriced plane ticket and a frantic day of packing, Daniel and Tahir — by virtue of Morocco’s fully closed borders — believed such options would not be available to them.

In a meeting on April 6, Princeton’s Town Council heard COVID-19 updates and a presentation on the University’s construction by Kristin Appelget, Director of Community and Regional Affairs at the University.

Sirad Hassan ’20 appeared on the Jeopardy! College Championship on Monday, April 6, competing against Emma Farrell, a senior at Carnegie Mellon University, and Marshall Comeaux, a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin.

I must admit that despite my concerted efforts to ignore current events so as not to further upset me, I have found myself engrossed in the news about the coronavirus pandemic. As a budding mathematician watching the spread of disease unfold on television, my eye always arrives at the numbers ticking away at the corner of the screen. I examine the number of total cases in the United States, the number of new cases, and the number of deaths — all terribly unsettling.

The Daily Princetonian is tracking all confirmed COVID-19 cases in New Jersey,
with particular attention paid to the University and the municipality of Princeton. See a timeline of our full coverage
here.

Bret Lundgaard is the head coach for Women’s Swimming and Diving, and led the Tigers to an Ivy League Championship before the COVID-19 pandemic suspended NCAA athletics. Forrest Meggers is an assistant professor of architecture, who founded and directs the University’s CHAOS (Cooling and Heating for Architecturally Optimized Systems) Lab.

A group of Canadian, Italian, and U.S. physicists and engineers, including University Professor of Physics Cristiano Galbiati, have designed and produced a prototype mechanical ventilator that may have the potential to be mass-produced for COVID-19 patients.

In dealing with a public health crisis that has inspired reality checks of all sorts, we are devoted to the notion that this virus changes everything, not just now but forever after. To cope, after all, we must submerge and overcome the worst aspects of ourselves, and recognize that we are all in this together, bigoted tirades and class distinctions notwithstanding.

On March 16, President Trump began referring to COVID-19 as the “Chinese Virus.” Other xenophobic varieties officials have used include: “the Chinese flu,” “the Wuhan coronavirus,” and my personal favorite, “Kung-Flu.” Many who have faced criticism for using such names have offered the defense that previous diseases have also been named after places, such as the Spanish flu and Ebola.

As COVID-19 cases have surged past 320,000 and more than 9,300 people have died in the United States alone, the University’s Office of the Dean for Research has called for research proposals to address the pandemic’s scientific and socioeconomic facets.

In an email sent out on Tuesday, March 31, on-campus students residing in Butler College’s 1967 Hall, 1976 Hall, and Yoseloff Hall were asked to relocate to Bloomberg Hall by Friday, April 3, in order to “secure spaces for self-isolation.”

During the April 4 meeting, the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) passed a resolution to extend the 2020 Spring Election voting period by 24 hours and to limit the number of campaign emails that can be sent to listservs to two per campaign for the entirety of the election cycle.